^ I don't think I said it, but what I was thinking about the typical ed is 'one-dimensional.' I would really be interested in hearing from someone in the magazine industry why this same simplistic work is presented over and over again.

The photographers are hired to deliver within certain guidelines set by the editors (and maybe even more importantly the companies that want to sell their stuff). So if it is boring as hell & focusing on the clothing = save bet to make the advertisers happy? (just my guess)
For guidelines I think about "topics" like the great gatsby, olympics, election, ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by YoninahAliza

Is there really any proof that women are better cooks then men?

No, statistics say men are better (michelin stars). Or is it a male conspiracy because all the critics are men as well?

the gender aspect why women "fail":
- more content with little (also why get generally get payed less)
- less competitive then men
- less likely to take risks (therefore less % succeed in the end)
- generally are more likely to hold back professionally when they are in a partnership, value personal life more

My fav female photog is Eve Arnold, like all of the great ones she had the ability to sense the perfect moment.
fashion: Kayt Jones, I generally like her aesthetics & style.

I'm with BerlinRocks. Men outweigh women in most, if not all, fields, either by quantity or by force/level of influence (modeling). The way a business is designed, the way dynamics to enter that business are shaped, how you stick around, it's all thought for men, or by men, it isn't just about making it in a male-dominated business but changing parameters so that no one has to 'break' through a structure that admits specific behavior but simply be in a level-playing field from the very beginning, and by beginning I'm talking about the way we're brought up (cultural elements that shape how we're to interact as adults, usually following what's expected of women/men).

I respect the focus on the microscopic world of fashion photography but that's merely reflecting where we are as a society, it has nothing to do with whether someone feels more or less, or is indecisive, or more decisive or just has more ideas or talent.. that's surface, the record we're supposed to repeat to ourselves in our professional life in order to explain (and justify, quite evidently) why things are they way they are.

Anyway, back to female photography.. many of my all-time favorite photographers are women (Deborah Turbeville, Sarah Moon, Vanina Sorrenti, Carlotta Manaigo, Lee Miller), I definitely think their approach to photography is remarkably different.. it's more complex for me, it's not really about exploring a certain aesthetic or working with trends (which men respond to quite well imo), there are multiple layers, a yes and a no in the same picture, criticism and tradition, and for the same reason (back to my point on business structure), I feel like that's why they (the ones I listed anyway) are not going to succeed in the same way someone like Meisel has, because what sells, what's expected is molded for someone like Meisel (or anyone who can do the same).

Most fields of art/science where there is a lot of competition are dominated by men. That this is connected to our social structure is a given. How it happens? I think it often happens by the rules of mentorship and reputation. In the case of female photographers it may be extreme.

How do you build a good reputation? By doing good work for a senior photographer/politician/scientist.

How does a senior photographer choose their assistants? By their talent and by how well they get along with this person - overlapping interests etc etc. People tend to pick protegés that are a lot like themselves and for a man that tends to be another man.

So on lower levels of performance, men and women perform evenly, but as soon as you get up to the higher levels where you most often find the master-protegé system, whoever is the most like the old masters has a distinct advantage....

The photographers are hired to deliver within certain guidelines set by the editors (and maybe even more importantly the companies that want to sell their stuff). So if it is boring as hell & focusing on the clothing = save bet to make the advertisers happy? (just my guess)
For guidelines I think about "topics" like the great gatsby, olympics, election, ...

No, statistics say men are better (michelin stars). Or is it a male conspiracy because all the critics are men as well?

the gender aspect why women "fail":
- more content with little (also why get generally get payed less)
- less competitive then men
- less likely to take risks (therefore less % succeed in the end)
- generally are more likely to hold back professionally when they are in a partnership, value personal life more

My fav female photog is Eve Arnold, like all of the great ones she had the ability to sense the perfect moment.
fashion: Kayt Jones, I generally like her aesthetics & style.

What I find annoying about a lot of editorials is that it can be almost impossible to see the clothes due to deep, dramatic shadows, b&w photography of colored garments, etc.

It's important to bear in mind that career success is something that has been largely defined by men (and enabled by women, both personally and professionally). So I like that you put 'fail' in quotation marks, because many women decide the whole system is BS, and I'm not going to say they're wrong (particularly since in many ways I agree).

In this and every field, there are still men at the top who never had any competition from women, either to speak of or at all, when they were coming up. Women have changed the whole picture already in a number of ways, and I think the changes have just begun. We're still playing by men's rules, so I certainly hope there are many more changes to come.

Regarding chefs, that is another outlier field where hours are incredibly long, leaving little for any kind of personal life. Recently a male chef here locally left the restaurant he opened and went to work for a high-end grocery store chain. There was a discussion on a food forum about it, how the mighty had fallen. I pointed out that maybe he wanted reasonable work hours if his children were young so that he could actually see them.

Statistics show that women are far more likely (I believe the study I saw was of recent graduates) to take what's offered to them and not negotiate. Possibly these women are clueing in as time goes on as I did. (Actually though, I just remembered that in my very first job, my male officemates got a raise, and I went and asked my boss for the same raise and argued with him about it ) My understanding is that my compensation stacks up quite well in comparison with the men around me (and has for awhile, not just in this job), but I have learned to negotiate. That's important ...

__________________There's a need for more individuality today, and my job is to cater to women, not dictate to them. --Alber Elbaz

ernst,you make a great point because i think people sometimes forget with any photographer,those stories are more often dictated by the editor/stylist and even the magazine they're working for. in the end it's that who publishes the work. so yes,guidelines and sometimes even limitations.

the gender aspect why women "fail":
- more content with little (also why get generally get payed less)
- less competitive then men
- less likely to take risks (therefore less % succeed in the end)
- generally are more likely to hold back professionally when they are in a partnership, value personal life more

I'm sorry but I refuse to have my gender belittled in such a way. You cannot generalise women like this. To be frank, it's sexism. What evidence do you have to support your claims?

Yes, more Michelin Starred chefs are male. This is not wholly because of a female lack of talent. The well established Patriarchy has made it incredibly difficult for women to enter and succeed in certain aspects of the food industry (just as in the fashion industry.) In fact, men underestimating women by saying that they're 'less competitive' etc is simply an excuse for them not to employ or support women. It's justifying the prejudice. MulletProof elaborated on this point more eloquently than I have.

Adding to the point that iluvjeisa made about male scientists, I think that the way in which we raise men and women as children shapes their abilities as adults. I read something about how the toys given to children nurture certain talents. For instance, dolls improve the social and nurturing skills of young children whereas train sets (or classically male children's toys such as race cars or Lego) nurture creativity and scientific thinking. If we only give little girls dolls to play with, perhaps their interest in science and other creative fields as adults is affected? Likewise, if boys are not given dolls, they can sometimes lack the emotional development that young girls acquire. Perhaps the way in which we're raising children forces them into a gender stereotype?

I believe that our society is changing and that we're making important steps towards equality. In the future we'll hopefully see just as many female fashion photographers as male ones.

^ I think it would be ludicrous to say that women are less talented chefs than men. There are clearly other factors affecting their 'success.'

I absolutely believe in nurture, but nature also plays its part. There are many ways in which we can improve nurture. I have seen over and over, in for example a relatively egalitarian group where women outnumbered men, these people have just come together, they elect leaders, and somehow men are in the highest/most important positions even though they are in the minority. Who put them there? Women. There are some mindsets that are fundamental for a lot of people that need to be addressed.

Wrt nature, I think it's true that men are naturally more competitive and naturally take more risks. (This is known informally by me as 'testosterone poisoning.') How many women have ever come close to running you off the road? I have to say that at least 99% of the dangerous drivers I've encountered, who were being competitive and taking risks (not yelling at the kids in the backseat), were men. (I would say 100% but I want to leave myself a margin of error.) There are differences between men and women, but I believe the healthy side of these qualities can absolutely be nurtured in women.

One would think from reading this thread that women were at a huge disadvantage in every field, which is not really true. The majority of law school graduates today are women, is my understanding. I believe the same is true for college graduates overall. Women now dominate a number of fields where they didn't even exist a few decades ago.

Huge progress has been made, and I would love to see progress here, since this niche field has major input into how women are portrayed in the media.

US Elle's editor seems to be the most progressive of the editors of the major US magazines ... perhaps we should write a few letters.

__________________There's a need for more individuality today, and my job is to cater to women, not dictate to them. --Alber Elbaz

What I meant with "fail" is that besides an often similar number of males/females having the same level of education (f.e. university degree) in the end the numbers extremely shift favoring men to be really successful. Just take the example of most natural sciences: more or less 50/50 male/female, but how many end up as professor & heads of R&D of big companies? (law = judge, economics = CEO... you name it)

Quote:

Originally Posted by mimirose

This is not wholly because of a female lack of talent

I never stated "lack of talent". I was giving reasons that despite similar talents the statistics point into only one direction.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mimirose

I believe that our society is changing and that we're making important steps towards equality. In the future we'll hopefully see just as many female fashion photographers as male ones.

Maybe in fashion photography. In general I honestly doubt it, but time will tell... and female quotas will help 0 with the problem (a biological male / female difference), but maybe "correct" the statistics and then the politicians can be happy again
(btw we need more male preschool teachers )

What I meant with "fail" is that besides an often similar number of males/females having the same level of education (f.e. university degree) in the end the numbers extremely shift favoring men to be really successful. Just take the example of most natural sciences: more or less 50/50 male/female, but how many end up as professor & heads of R&D of big companies? (law = judge, economics = CEO... you name it)

I never stated "lack of talent". I was giving reasons that despite similar talents the statistics point into only one direction.

Maybe in fashion photography. In general I honestly doubt it, but time will tell... and female quotas will help 0 with the problem (a biological male / female difference), but maybe "correct" the statistics and then the politicians can be happy again
(btw we need more male preschool teachers )

You miss an important point and that is that for the highest positions (CEOs, Professors etc) you need to be good at networking and you need to be able to get the advise of your superiors about how to advance. Without that, you are, unless your family has a history in your chosen field, dead in the water.

Networking happens most flawlessly between similar individuals. So to a woman in a field with 80% men, only ~20% of the network is easily accessible to her. If you think that's not going to affect her chances for the top positions, you are wrong.

^ I think it's possible for a woman to network with men, but people are most enthusiastic about mentoring, hiring, promoting, etc. people who remind them of themselves, and gender is most definitely a factor in that. I remember I was so surprised when I observed at work that sexism seems to cut deeper than any other prejudice. Men of color, men who are gay, are still men.

__________________There's a need for more individuality today, and my job is to cater to women, not dictate to them. --Alber Elbaz

The industry promotes men in every aspect of the game. Someone powerful like Anna Wintour could take note of the work of a new female photographer and use her for some Vogue editorials but for whatever reason she doesn't. Why do all the Vogues use the same photographers is something I'd like to know?

I noticed Camilla Akrans did the cover shoot for the new US Bazaar with Kate Hudson. What stood out to me in the photos I've seen so far is that Kate's personality comes through extremely well. The photos seem to be about her, rather than anything else.

__________________There's a need for more individuality today, and my job is to cater to women, not dictate to them. --Alber Elbaz

I'm surprised nobody speaks of children and pregnancy ...
In other fields, this is why a man would be preferred to a woman, and this is why, too, for instance in France - at least, women earn 20% less than men for the same position say the statistics ...
We live (at least in western and Christian countries) in a patriarchal society. Women really started to work in the very late 19th century (for the most industrial countries), and until my grand-mother generation, women were the ones taking care of children and the social life. They could have hobbies, but these were not taken seriously.
In arts, women started to get reconnaissance in the mid 20th century - even though there were Marie Curie, Camille Claudel and Colette, those were exceptions -, in the postwar period. I'm not a specialist of this, but who can give me more than 10 names of female photographers before 1945 ? Moreover, from its invention til the first three decades of the 20th century, photography was not considered art and was, too, a very technical medium, big materials to carry etc. and the women were the ones in front of the camera mostly, not behind the lens ... These are only cliches, probably ... And there's probably some women photographers, amateurs, we don't know yet about ... But, I'm not sure that in Europe, there were a lot of those women.

So women don't lack of talent, for sure ... There's just no big and huge and tons of them before the generation born btw late 1960s and now ...
And I think it's true that their subject and complexity of work is very different from the men's ones ... Probably, because they don't want to repeat the machist thematics of sex ...
Why do people hire men to shoot campaign ? Is it because they are better ? I doubt ... It's because these two current generations of photographers working (Testino, Teller, Mondino, Richardson etc.) were not yet generations where women were yet dominant ...

And perhaps, because women start a career in photography, but then they have children and a family and take care of them ... So they focus less on their careers. You know there are still a lot of pressure on women who do not have babies and family ... I know very few women who focused on their careers over their "womanly expectations" ... Those manage to be better than men, most of the time ...

No, statistics say men are better (michelin stars). Or is it a male conspiracy because all the critics are men as well?

Actually if you think that because male chefs are better than women chefs because their restaurants have more Michelin stars you really do not know how to read statistics.

Women for a world of reasons are under represented almost everywhere, except in the jobs traditionally female, there is no such thing as equality between man and women in the work place or in society in general, so inferring someone's talent in a certain field by what gender is most predominant in that area is laughable.
At the end of the day, a lot of women grow to be extremely successful in all areas, so clearly we are not doomed by genetics, in art photography Nan Goldin, Sally Mann and Cindy Sherman can command huge amounts. Actually Cindy Sherman till quite recently was the author of the most expensive photograph ever sold.
I have no illusions, there will never be true equality, the fact we are the ones that have to carry the babies and all the changes that implies will always makes us different, and it's a positive thing,it should be seen as a privilege not a hindrance. But women, if they wish can play the exactly same game as men, if you are convinced that they "fail" in certain areas simply because they happen to have the same sex, besides the fact that's an extremely misogynistic view to hold, you are in for some surprises in life.